


Cul-de-Sac (No hawkers, traders, cold callers, canvassers or purveyors of religious knowledge)

by lost_spook



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Constructed Reality, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:25:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sapphire and Steel are living ordinary lives in a semi-detached house on a quiet street.  Everything is <i>fine</i>.  Or, at least, it is until somebody new moves in next door…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cul-de-Sac (No hawkers, traders, cold callers, canvassers or purveyors of religious knowledge)

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to SeriesFive (who was happy to let me steal her prompt, but, of course, not her ideas) and to aralias (who wanted S&S AUs, which this isn't, but was intended to be and the reason I went prompt-thieving). However, the truth is, it's all my own fault, as usual.
> 
> The nature of the reality in which S&S find themselves is, for obvious reasons, very much 1980s Britain, with all that that entails.

Sapphire observed at breakfast that the house next door had been sold at last, even if only to break the sullen silence that had ensued after the catastrophe of the incorrect marmalade (lemon was apparently a travesty, whether shredded or shredless). Steel felt that it was a crime to play fast and loose with breakfast foods, but sometimes Sapphire felt the need to rebel.

“Well, let’s hope they don’t have children,” said Steel, folding up the newspaper decisively and putting it down on the table. “The last one was bad enough.”

Sapphire smiled to herself. She’d quite liked their last neighbour, despite – or because of – the constant loud singing, and, anyway, she was fairly sure there never had been any children, certainly not next door. “Oh, I don’t think so, darling.”

He glanced up at that, as if he suspected she was making fun of him by use of the endearment, which she wasn’t. Or not strictly speaking, and only for his own good, anyway. “Good. I don’t suppose they’ll bother us, anyway.”

“No,” said Sapphire, with some regret, since she didn’t mind being bothered by other people occasionally. “I don’t suppose they will.”

Steel rose from the table and presently returned to give her a perfunctory kiss in farewell and depart for his usual work at the local council offices. She was always forgetting precisely what he did there, but it wasn’t important. 

Once he was gone, she settled down to her own work. Sapphire pursued a career as an artist, one of those incomprehensible modern artists, as she liked to tell people, mostly to see what they’d say. Steel regarded her painting as somewhat frivolous, but she ignored that. She was never entirely what his opinion of her art was any more, to be honest. That was how they’d met, of course, at one of her exhibitions. He’d been complaining too incautiously about modern art in general and one of her works in particular and it had piqued her sense of humour to try and win him over. 

At least, she thought, with a sudden frown, she was sure that was how it had been. It must have been, mustn’t it?

 

None of their previous neighbours had impinged on their lives, although Steel had resented the last – a cheerful giant of a man who’d sung so loudly they’d heard it through the walls and who seemed to have a knack for appearing by the dividing hedge every time Steel reluctantly went out there to take his turn with the gardening. Cutting the grass, he said, was bad enough, without someone laughing and singing and offering to uproot the roses. Still, he hadn’t done anything worse, and Sapphire had liked him in a distant sort of way. 

Sapphire didn’t especially imagine this one would be any different. They had a happy, peaceful life here, she and Steel, together in this modern semi-detached house in a conveniently situated and quiet cul-de-sac. Nothing out of the ordinary ever troubled them, and nothing ever would. She did, though, sometimes pause to consider that that might be strange in itself.

 

However, the new neighbour didn’t seem to understand how things worked around here. On his very first day, he took a careless short cut across the tidy lawn and rang their doorbell. Sapphire tried to remember the last time anyone had knocked or rung at the door, and wasn’t sure. But of course, it must have been recent – the postman, or the milkman, naturally. One didn’t recall such mundane events.

Sapphire raised an eyebrow at Steel and headed out to answer it. He followed her to the living room door, curious himself, or perhaps only irritated at the interruption to their routine. She pulled open the door.

“So sorry to bother you,” said the stranger, giving her a smile, which she returned, instinctively liking him. He was improbable somehow, slight and with bright red hair, which he wore too long. (Steel, she knew, would comment on that with disfavour the moment he’d gone.) “I’ve just moved in next door, and if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to borrow a cup of salt.”

“Salt?” Sapphire said. “Are you sure?”

“And you can’t,” said Steel, moving forwards to join her in the doorway. “Borrow salt, that is. Not unless you plan to take it home and look at it for a while before you bring it back.”

Their new neighbour raised his eyebrows at that, but he didn’t seem as taken aback at Steel’s abrupt manner as Sapphire would have expected. He raised a finger and paused for thought, and then said, “No, no, I’ve got it wrong, haven’t I? I meant to say sugar.”

“That is the cliché, yes,” said Sapphire, amused. 

Steel glared from behind her. “And when you’ve made up your mind which it is you want, there’s a supermarket five minutes away from here which you can take yourself off to.”

“It’s very convenient,” added Sapphire. “I hope you’re settling in all right, Mr –?”

“Silver,” said the man. “Well, I may possibly – I mean, if I could just come in for a bit –”

Steel cut in. “If you don’t mind, we’re busy – and if you stand there any longer, you won’t get to the shop before it closes.”

After she’d shut the door, Sapphire turned around to Steel. “There’s no need to be quite so rude.”

“We don’t want to encourage him, do we?” said Steel. “And, anyway, you can’t borrow salt. Or sugar. Even if you mean you’re going to buy the lender some in return, it’s not as if it’s the same granules you’re giving back, is it?”

Sapphire moved past him across the hall and grimaced at him as she passed.

“There was something about him I didn’t like,” said Steel, eventually, by way of some sort of explanation, or maybe even apology.

Sapphire laughed. “That’s funny. I was thinking the opposite.”

“You were?” said Steel, in genuine surprise. “Really?”

 

Silver did seem, suddenly, to be always around. It was disconcerting, Sapphire found. She asked him at one point what he actually did, and he only looked guilty and waved a hand and then said he was self-employed – an electrician of sorts. 

“Shouldn’t you have a van, then?” she asked, mockingly. “And go out to work from time to time?”

Silver laughed at her. “No, I can’t say I’ve ever needed a van. And, as to the rest – my job is very specialised, you see. It’s complicated. I’m working on something right now.”

She was about to ask what, but he forestalled her with a wink. 

“Top secret,” he said. “What about you, Sapphire? What is it you’re doing here?”

It was an oddly phrased question, one of those things that made her understand why his presence unsettled Steel. And when she had explained that she was an artist, he had suddenly become very animated and enthusiastic and asked if he might see her paintings.

She let him, though she wasn’t sure why. It would be bound to annoy Steel, if he knew, although maybe that was in part why, because she did think a man who was so unreasonable about marmalade and other such insignificant matters really didn’t have to be quite so critical of the way she might – only very occasionally, of course – forget to put the bathroom towels back on the rail. Or how she squeezed the toothpaste, if it came down to it.

“They’re rather abstract,” she said, as Silver looked at several of them closely. “Not to everyone’s taste, of course.”

Silver, however, seemed to find something about them highly amusing, though he remained outwardly polite and complimentary. “Abstract?” he said, eventually. “I think not. Painted from memory, perhaps?” He moved back to the last one again, and ran a light hand down the edge of it. It showed a series of refracted images of a clock and flowers. “Or possibly – dreams, Sapphire?”

Sapphire pretended very hard that she thought he was joking, and laughed at him. She even thought he might have believed her.

 

The next trouble was the inexplicable noises in the attic. The second time it happened, Steel, after staring at the ceiling as if it had personally offended him, marched off to seize the stepladder from the garage and investigate.

“It’s probably mice,” Sapphire said, watching as he got the ladder in place and put one foot on it. “Or birds.”

Before he could go any further, the hatch was moved aside from above and a familiar head appeared through it, now upside down.

“Oh,” said Silver in apparent surprise at finding them both watching him. He beamed at them. “Hello. How nice to see you.”

Steel glared at him and climbed a few rungs further up. “Give me one good reason not to phone the police right now!”

“Obviously, I thought this was _my_ attic,” said Silver, sounding hurt at the idea that there might be something wrong in unexpectedly entering someone’s house by means of the roof. “I must have wondered too far across. I’m sorry.”

Steel got to the top of the ladder, as Silver retreated back into the loft. “Just go! Now!”

“One thing,” said Silver, his voice muffled now through the ceiling, as Sapphire tried to listen. “Are you absolutely sure this is your attic?”

“Of course it’s my bloody attic,” snapped Steel. “The only thing I’m not sure about is what you’re doing in it.”

“Only,” said Silver, taking no notice of Steel’s aggression, “it’s completely empty. Isn’t that a little unusual?”

“I don’t hoard old junk, that’s all.”

Silver laughed. “Oh, I can believe that. But, Steel, trust me – this is the only attic I have.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Well, yes, exactly,” said Silver, and after that, Sapphire heard no more until Steel climbed back down the ladder, with a scowl on his face, and said that obviously the damned lunatic must have got out through a hole in the wall somehow.

Afterwards, Steel spent a whole series of evenings up there, searching for the hole to mend, but he couldn’t find it and grumpily concluded that Silver must have closed it up behind him.

 

Following that incident, there was a whole series of electrical faults, one after the other, each too brief to warrant calling anybody in. First, the kettle started boiling whenever someone switched on the landing light. Next the TV abruptly changed channels every time they turned the oven off. Then it was opening the fridge that caused the kitchen light to go out, and for a few days, every time Steel tried to have a shower, the trip switch went, turning off all the electricity. Throughout, the radio seemed to have developed a mind of its own and a tendency to pick up stations from impossibly distant countries.

Of course, they should have complained to someone, even if a solid accusation would have been hard to pin down, but Steel seemed to be almost enjoying the war, trying without that much success to fix the faults as they arose, and Sapphire found it somehow more amusing than irritating and thought about painting a new picture that would somehow reflect the experience.

And it was Steel, strangely enough, who said one evening – after he’d come to the end of a rather long tirade and a promise that this time he really was going to report Silver to some authority or other, or maybe even take measures as extreme as going round to give him a piece of his mind – that it was almost as if Silver was trying to send them a message.

 

That wasn’t even the whole of it. Silver suddenly started showing up at odd intervals with flowers or other gifts for Sapphire. Nothing more, and not _too_ often, but with a worryingly accurate tendency to arrive on the doorstep mere moments after Steel had been more bad-tempered than usual, something Steel found completely infuriating. Sapphire, however, couldn’t help but appreciate the increased attention she got from both quarters. Steel had even managed a grudging apology about the fuss he’d made that morning about cereal that looked deceptively like cornflakes but were in fact, not, and contained other ingredients, which he deemed unnecessary and possibly a violation of some international convention.

“Well, why don’t _you_ try doing the shopping for a change?” said Sapphire, giving way to a rare burst of impatience.

Steel looked at her. “You know you’re the one who insisted that I _don’t_. So don’t go flinging that in my face now.”

“Yes,” said Sapphire. “I know.”

“And I was more than happy to cook, but you –”

“Yes,” Sapphire said, again, her sense of humour resurfacing. “Only in dire emergencies, Steel, that was what we agreed.”

“Well, then.”

At which point, the doorbell rang again, with the same impeccable bad timing.

 

“This,” said Steel, thrusting the small box of chocolates back at Silver, “is intolerable! It has to stop!”

Silver gaped at him and looked back down at the offending article. “It was only a small, free –”

“This is the last time,” said Steel, grabbing him by the collar. “Do you understand?”

Silver looked as if he was still about to try arguing further, but then he smiled suddenly, not in the least troubled by Steel’s threats. “I’m so sorry. You’re absolutely right, of course. This is _completely_ unfair of me, isn’t it?”

Steel let go of Silver, but somehow, he didn’t find that a very reassuring response.

 

The next bunch of flowers were for Steel. As was the following card, also the small tie pin, and the exceptionally tacky Christmas ornament, although the assorted box of biscuits was for them both.

“It isn’t even Christmas,” Steel complained, as if that was the point. “And he’d already taken some of those biscuits.”

Sapphire laughed at him, as he sat in the armchair and scowled at the unwanted gifts. Then she crossed over and sat on his lap. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t tell him to stop it _and_ grumble because he’s eaten all the custard creams.”

Steel looked at her. “I know. It’s just – this must sound odd, I know, but I started thinking… has it ever been Christmas here?”

Sapphire couldn’t remember that it had. And it should have been at some point, shouldn’t it? Christmas, or Easter, or the summer holidays, or May Day, or August Bank Holiday, Hallowe’en, Bonfire Night… For a moment, she hesitated, and then she shook herself. There was always an explanation, and this one was simple. “You always said it was a lot of nonsense and we shouldn’t bother. I suppose we could next year – now that we have this.”

“It is a lot of nonsense,” said Steel, but he still frowned on until she kissed the troublesome idea away.

 

“Well, why don’t you phone the police?” asked Sapphire, when Steel had launched into yet another complaint about their exceptionally irritating neighbour. The presents had stopped, at least for the moment, and there’d been an unnerving silence – until today.

Steel paused in his pacing about the living room. “You can’t report someone to the police for breaking in while you’re out and fixing all the clocks.”

“Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps they started again by themselves.”

“Is that likely?” said Steel, and neither of them, Sapphire noted, asked why all of their timepieces had been broken in the first place. “Anyway, we know it was him. My watch vanished at the same time and that reappeared on the doorstep – back in working order, inside a box and wrapped up in cellophane. With a bow on top.”

Sapphire bit her lip. By this point, it was probably reprehensible of her to still be amused by Silver’s behaviour, but she was. “Maybe you should try talking to him.”

“I did.”

“Not shouting at him, Steel. Talking to him.”

Steel sat down in the nearest chair. “Have you tried, Sapphire? He never even seems to listen to what you say – or, no, it’s as if he’s not even taking us seriously.”

“Yes,” said Sapphire. “What do you think he wants? Why is he doing this?”

Steel shrugged. “How the hell should I know?”

“There’s something you’re wondering about, though, isn’t there?” she asked. “I know there is.”

“This is impossible,” said Steel, slowly, carefully. “ _He’s_ impossible.”

Sapphire put her hands in her lap. “Do you remember when I told you about those dreams of mine?”

“They were just nightmares, Sapphire.”

“I don’t know,” she said, leaning forward suddenly. “They always seemed so very real. I think that was what was terrifying about them. When I woke, I always felt utterly certain that _this_ was the dream.”

Steel shifted in his seat, as if he was uncomfortable. “But it wasn’t, was it?”

“And when I showed Silver my paintings,” said Sapphire, distantly, “he asked me if I painted them from memory – or from dreams. And he was right.”

“I suppose that explains a lot,” said Steel, and then caught her look. “Yes. I think I’ve always felt there was something unsettling about them – the way they make everything else seem almost faded next to them. But how could he know?”

Sapphire held his gaze. “Yes,” she said. “How, exactly? And his presents, some of them – even one of those chocolates seemed to have more solidity, more weight, more depth than this house and everything in it. I threw it away with the rest, of course, but I can’t help wondering –”

“Sapphire?”

She shook herself. “Well, what would have happened if I had eaten one?”

“If this were unreal,” said Steel. “If this were the dream –”

“Then something from the outside might seem every bit as impossible or inexplicable as Silver does to us now.”

“True,” said Steel, and then through her a humorous glance. “Well, up to a point. I don’t think anything would explain _him_. But what I meant, Sapphire, was that if this is the dream, then what is the reality?”

Sapphire gave an uncertain smile, but she rose from her chair and held out her hand to him. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice slightly husky, “but I think we should ask him, don’t you?”

Steel got to his feet in response and gripped her hand, as tightly as he could.

“And I _am_ sure,” said Sapphire, “that whatever it is, you and I will still be there. Together. Always.”

He kissed her anyway, in farewell, just in case.

 

They walked across the lawn and over to Silver’s front door, hand in hand, Sapphire also carrying a bunch of flowers – it was only fair, she said, with that amused light in her eyes.

“Oh, at _last_ ,” said Silver, opening the door before they could even knock. He smiled at them widely, and stood aside, gesturing for them to come in, which was the moment that they realised the house next door didn’t even exist.

 

In the darkness that was all that was left after the illusion had become unsustainable, the three of them remained standing together.

“How long has it been?” said Steel.

Silver turned his head. “Long enough, Steel. We were beginning to think you two had settled down there for life.”

“And Lead – Lead was here before,” Sapphire added. “How could we not have seen?”

Silver shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“And why didn’t you try to tell us instead of putting on that ridiculous performance?” Steel demanded.

“Jet _did_ ,” said Silver. “You still don’t remember that, even now? Well, it wasn’t pleasant. Oh, no, don’t worry,” he added, on Steel’s look, “she’s fine. Or she is now, anyway. So we had to try an indirect approach, but it was very difficult to get inside, harder still to interact with the illusion, especially for any length of time. They thought Lead would be too obvious for you to miss, but apparently not. So they sent me. I don’t know why it took them so long to realise I was needed.”

Sapphire smiled at him. “Well, thank you, Silver. And it was certainly an experience. At least now I know why Steel doesn’t eat. Or cook.”

“My cooking was adequate.”

“Yes, adequate is exactly what it was,” said Sapphire. “No more and no less than what was needed, in strictly regulated portions and no unnecessary extra ingredients, flavours, sauces –”

 _I don’t see a problem with that,_ Steel said inside her mind, and she put her hand to his shoulder. She hadn’t remembered, but she had still been missing his presence inside her thoughts all this while. “As a human, however, you could have been tidier. And as for those reckless paintings –”

“Well, while we’re on the subject,” said Sapphire, “you were hardly consistent. Orange marmalade is not an essential food stuff, not by any definition I’ve ever found.”

Silver gave them alarmed look. “Really, this was tiresome enough through the wall every morning! You’re not _still_ going to –?”

They both turned to stare at him.

“My house didn’t technically exist,” he said, impatient at their slowness. “When I was there, I didn’t exactly have any choice but to listen. Amusing enough to begin with, of course, but all so very human and tedious. I don’t know how you managed to stay there for so long.”

Sapphire took Steel’s hand again. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, sharing a look with her partner. “There were some compensations.”

Silver laughed. “Oh?”

“But now,” Sapphire continued, casting another amused look towards Steel, “I think it’s long past time to move out.”


End file.
